China's flailing birth into modernity in Age of Ambition

From the week of June 9th, 2014

China has forever been a mystery to the West. With a vast cultural history whose longevity is rivaled only by the Egyptians, its philosophers, its artists and even its rulers have enriched the world with their teachings, their creations and their approaches to public works. And yet, for all of this cultural wealth, China has remained an enigma to outsiders, a gem that cannot be valued. For not only have the countless generations endowed its people with a sense of superiority over younger, more ignorant nations, its leaders have often indulged in noteworthy strains of xenophobia that have frequently kept out foreigners.

Western economic advancements in the 20th century, however, have put an end to that isolation. For they, coupled with the disastrous Great Leap Forward, threatened to leave China sprawling amidst history's dust, an impoverished and forgotten nation. No longer. Internal reforms have not only opened China up to the world, they have lifted millions out of abject poverty and started China on the march towards a starring role in the 21st century. And it is of this emerging nation that Mr. Osnos takes his enduring snapshot.

China is at a crossroads. Having emerged from the self-imposed annihilation of the Maoist era, it has undergone a political and economic revolution to become something new in our world, an authoritarian capitalist state that, nonetheless, pretends to hold to its communist beginnings. From the Free Economic Zones in the 1990s to the factory cities of the aughts, it has managed to adopt many western values, consumption, brand identification, and affordable exports, all without relinquishing the one-party system that has governed the country since the 1940s. It has tried, with some success, to incentivize and empower a prosperous business class, to help it compete with the west, without allowing its increasingly wealthy and educated citizens to mire the nation in the democracy's bureaucratic quagmire.

But as much as this streamlined form of capitalism has elevated China into the class of advanced nations, it has lead to widespread sociopolitical problems that will plague it for years to come. For while, to some degree, the tide of the Chinese Miracle has lifted all boats, its blessings have been selfishly accrued by a small class of political and economic elites who have used their wealth to not only isolate themselves from China proper, but also from any repercussions from the Chinese state. This ruling class, combined with a strong sense of pervasive corruption within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has lead many to think that they are but exploited cogs in an unfathomably large machine, unheeded and unheard.

The voice of these voiceless, Age of Ambition is a fascinating glimpse of a society undergoing tumultuous change. Evan Osnos, an American journalist who has recently returned to the west after eight years living and working in China, lays before the reader a cast of individuals, the everyday and the extraordinary, in an attempt to convey not only the existential struggles, but the daily rhythms of Chinese life. In this, his entertaining and eminently readable chronicle oscillates between fixating on political corruption, its ubiquitousness and its exposure, and the lives of the Chinese people who must negotiate two distinct and equally challenging obstacle courses: the trials and tribulations of life in the 21st century and the ever-changing collection of human rights they may or may not be afforded depending upon the whimsy of the all-power state.

Individually, none of Mr. Osnos' idiosyncratic case studies are particularly interesting. Some, like the man who yearns to teach English, activate our empathy while others, like the author turned race-car driver and sometimes political dissident, are engagingly amusing. But none rise above the threshold of simply holding our attention. However, their power, here, comes in the aggregate. The gestalt of all these lives, troubled by the state's fickleness and fears, by a pervasive willingness to exploit their fellows, and by a makeshift, unevenly applied system of justice that evokes memories of the Wild West, leads us to the realization that the CCP has only adopted the convenient aspects of capitalism and not the ethical framework required to sustain it. They have appropriated the engine of economic progress without bothering to assemble the car around it. And given that capitalism is, at the best of times, heartless, adopting only its underpinnings, and not the two centuries of moral customs that developed around it, is bound to start a fire of outrage in the hearts of the Chinese people that will eventually burn away the cynical system that seeks to run their lives.

But while Age of Ambition is both valuable and often powerful, its focus leaves much to be desired. Mr. Osnos, atimes, appears to be writing a polemic against the Chinese state, detailing the various scandals in which it has been captured during his time there. At other times, he chooses, instead, to focus on the struggles of everyday Chinese who have no connection to the government at all. Which leaves this reader with the sense that the author was sufficiently moved by the plights of the men and women he met to include their trials in his chronicle, but he could not find a common thread that would connect them to the broader, political narrative. This is hardly a grievous blow to the work, but one is left wondering if the work would have been improved by deciding to focus on one or the other.

On the whole, an excellent and enlightening journey through a fascinating country that it would take lifetimes to understand. (4/5 Stars)

An extraordinary person, an unjust fate in The Spy Who Loved

From the Week of February 17th, 2014

Joy comes in many forms. Be it ushering a new life into the world or watching a young mind expand with the possibilities of the life to come, be it performing a perfect piece of music or experiencing the power of a sublimely toned body, we are all uplifted by the exhilaration of life's rare moments, those cherished slivers of time in which we, or those we know, are at our best. But while, for most of us, it is enough to simply have these precious memories, others are not so easily satiated by the past. For these souls, joy only erupts from the extremity of emotion and circumstance, from moments in which one's life or one's wellbeing has been wagered on the outcome. Which is precisely why the past wont' suffice. For it is already a known quantity, a settled question from which victory has already flowed. The next battle is the only cure. But as Clare Mulley explains in her riveting work, for some, there can be no more battles.

Born in 1905 to a wealthy, landed family in Poland, Krystyna Skarbec of a daughter of the aristocracy, an educated beauty of class and repute whose life was overturned and shaped by the two great wars that transfixed Europe in the first few decades of the 20th century. Without the Nazis and Communism, without politics and ideology, she might have been someone's wife, a creature living a life of proscribed comfort in which the sorrows and frustrations of being a pretty woman in a man's world would have remained her own. But when the freedom of her beloved country was crushed beneath the jackboots of continental regimes hungering to impose their notion of unity upon the world, the cage of her social confinement was breached, allowing her to crawl out into a broken world and fight for her own freedom.

Beginning in 1939 and only concluding with the end of the Second World War, Krystyna Skarbec, naturalized by Britain as Christine Granville, was an agent in both the Polish Resistance and the Special Operations Executive, a British organization whose remit was to spy on the Axis powers and to commit acts of sabotage where possible. Trained in everything from parachute drops to the transmission of secret codes, Skarbec operated behind enemy lines in much of occupied western Europe, curriering messages to the Allies, helping to take fortified Nazi positions and even intervening to bribe Nazi officers to spare allied prisoners. But despite her extraordinary efforts and the Allied victory over the Axis, she was never able to free her beloved Poland which would remain in the rough hands of soviet Russia long after she had succumbed to the miseries of postwar life.

The spellbinding account of a remarkable woman, The Spy Who Loved is nothing short of extraordinary. Ms. Mulley, an author and journalist, has helped to resurrect the life and times of a woman who should have never been lost to the rough tides of history, whose fearlessness and determination remain inspirational even some sixty years after her death. Swiftly dispensing with Granville's early years, the author concentrates on Granvile's wartime service, painting a lush portrait of a woman of charm and hunger, of grand habits and even grander drive who surmounted the prejudices of her age to leave her mark, to make a difference, to be someone. That sorrow was her primary reward for such strength of will is a pity that no amount of acclaim can sooth.

Cultures then and now might call Krystyna Skarbec a slut. They might look at her sexual appetites and her many lovers and dismiss her as a woman who slept her way to success. Indeed, this opinion, or fear of, is partially responsible for her present anonymity. For the men with whom she was close were so eager to guard her reputation that they were reluctant for her story to be told at all. This is idiocy. For while it is inappropriate to so blithely condemn any woman, it is even more foolish to do so with a woman who behaved no differently than any of her many male comrades. And even were it appropriate to label any woman such, such a label would not fit. For far from a degenerate, skarbec seized life, sucking from it every drop of nourishment it could offer her. In wartime, she comes alive, relishing her own agency, her own power, her own capacity to be a hero. This is the designation she has earned, not one rooted in dated sexist notions of foolish propriety.

As much as this is a winning biography of a rare woman in a brutal period of history, The Spy Who Loved is also a kind of office drama set in wartime. As the first woman to join the SOE, Skarbec was beset by all manner of prejudices that, with sixty years of reformist hindsight, appear even more absurd now than they must have seemed to her then. Despite her willingness to risk her life for her country, despite her obvious competence in the arenas of espionage and sabotage, she was distrusted, denied the legal use of a gun and often marginalized to the sidelines of a war she was eager to fight. Worst of all these nonsensical sins, however, is Skarbec's treatment after the war where upon England, the nation so fond of thinking of itself as the great civilizer, entangled her in sexist legalities which not only denied her the combat medals she so clearly deserved, but obligated her to pretend to be married in order to receive the citizenship she'd so clearly earned. It is shameful enough that these foolish codes troubled such a courageous veteran. That they also indirectly contributed to her death is an intolerable irony.

The Spy Who Loved could have devoted more time to Skarbec's early years. And indeed, it is slightly troubling that so much of the work has to be told through the eyes of others, an unfortunate necessity thanks to the dearth of skarbec's own correspondence. But these are small imperfections in what is otherwise the biography of a brave, liberated hero who should be celebrated for achievements on the battlefield and pitied for the peace she could never find off of it. Unforgettable... (4/5 Stars)

The greed, corruption and the disasters aboard The Outlaw Sea

From The Week of November 25th, 2013

For as much as globalization and the Internet have helped to homogenize human civilization, humanity remains fractured, an assembly of nation states which possess their own ideas, ethics and agendas. Certainly, there are occasions in which these national interests overlap, prompting some of the world's countries to accrete into blocks which act to achieve a common goal, but for the most part the international spirit, not to mention international law, is little more than a glossy veneer for strong nations to impose their values and their desires upon weaker ones, leading to conflict and discord that sometimes takes decades to unravel. For most of us, this is simply the world we live in, a known commodity that we can no more alter than ignore, and yet, this divisiveness causes real damage, a truth made frighteningly apparent in William Langewiesche's excellent work.

Earth is a misnomer. For the surface of our world is more than 75-percent water, an intractable, unfathomable oceanic expanse that is as eternal as it is ever-changing. It is not only a necessity for life on land, serving as the source of both our food and, indirectly, our water, it is, even in the 21st century, the primary means by which humans shift resources around the world. Without the oceans, international trade, the mechanism upon which all our economies rest, would be much more costly and complicated, having to take almost exclusively to the skies.

However, despite the inarguable value of this commonly held resource, the laws and the practices that characterize international waters are a strange mishmash of traditions and might-makes-right mentalities that make traversing it less than ideal. For not only do captains have to be aware of natural hazards that can sink their vessels, they must also combat the threat of piracy which is a profitable trade, particularly for those who come from impoverished countries and backgrounds. These risks, along with the inevitable corporate greed which precludes merchant vessels from being properly maintained, ensures that our oceans will remain a dangerous, alien place for decades to come.

Operating brilliantly at the intersection of nature and human avarice, the Outlaw Sea serves as an excellent primer on the commercial state of our modern oceans. Shaped by two telling sea-born disasters in the last 15 years, the MS Estonia, a passenger ferry, and the Crystal, an aging freighter, it sets out to illustrate the perils and the imbecility that often governs human activity at sea. In this, it is a success, a well-reasoned and carefully methodical takedown of a culture crying out for reform and oversight. For while most of the captains who steer these mammoth vessels may be creatures of honor and respectability, they are in the employ of corporations that not only put their lives at risk by making a sham of inspection processes, they deliberately set out to limit their liabilities for spills and disasters, hiding behind false flags and meaningless registries to obscure the extent of their culpability and responsibility.

And yet, as Mr. Langewiesche details at some length, it is difficult to enforce an international standard of any kind when such a standard is bound to be against the interests of at least some of the nations that make up our world. And given that all nations must trade in order to survive, and that trade over water is essential, then it becomes much easier to subvert and ignore these standards than it is to face the prospect of lost profits. And of course, these are the governments who actually have a sufficient grip over their own affairs to act one way or the other. There are many more failed nations who lack even this minimal amount of control, allowing private interests to run roughshod beneath flags with already tattered reputations.

Mr. Langewiesche is a thorough journalist who clearly cares deeply about his craft and the subjects he investigates. And while this may, at times, cause him to fixate on seemingly small details in the grand pictures he's presenting, this is more than compensated for by his ability to expose and communicate the dirt, the grease and the grime that we have allowed to accumulate upon the gears that make up this great machine we call commerce. If he strikes a somewhat pessimistic tone as a result of this reporting, well, one needs only read his chronicles to understand why. For reform can only flower when powerful interests are properly checked and there seems little hope of that when so much wealth and advantage is at stake.

A chilling and revelatory glimpse of a world we never see... (4/5 Stars)

The genius and the curse of Walmart winningly captured in The Walmart Effect

From The Week of August 12th, 2013

Of all the traits humans share with their fellow organisms, a desire for a efficiency must be considered the most pervasive and consequential. For though it does not rise to the surface of our everyday thoughts, in governing everything from the way we walk to the manner in which we approach daily tasks, it shapes our every action. This is not altruism, nor is it a conscious effort to leave as little a footprint in our wake as possible. It is an outgrowth of the harsh discipline evolution has stamped upon our genes. For when energy is scarce, as it has been for most of our genetic history, what little is available must be preserved at all costs in order to improve the odds of survival. Unlike every other creature on Earth, however, humans have freed themselves of the chains of that limited energy environment and exploded into a world where the desire for efficiency can have a global impact. And it is difficult to imagine their being any organization to better represent both the glories and the tragedies of this truth than Walmart. Charles Fishman explains.

Launched with humility and little fanfare in 1962, Walmart has become, in the decades since, a retail phenomenon that has swept the globe. Sporting a workforce of 1.6 million associates, enough to populate a small country, and amassing sales that make it larger than much of its competition combined, it has deployed the singular vision of its founder to create a retail empire unrivaled in human history. Eschewing flashy sales and headline-grabbing headquarters that so often tempt its competitors into profligacy, its philosophy is shockingly simple; sell for the lowest price possible. Then, next year, find a way to sell for even less. And continue until every possible inefficiency has been wrung out of the retail system. This not only fosters trust in customers who don't have to worry about waiting for half-off sales to purchase their goods, it drives their suppliers to streamline their practices until every non-essential element has been eliminated from their business.

This thirst for the lowest price has had a transformative impact upon the retail chain, allowing customers to purchase goods at prices that, adjusted for inflation, are a fraction of what they once were. However, it has also placed many of Walmart's suppliers in an impossible position. For there are only so many inefficiencies to eliminate. Once they are gone, Walmart's relentless drive presents them with one of two unpleasant options: lower the quality of their goods in order to save money, or lowering their prices and eliminating their profit margins which exposes them to the risk of being hurled into bankruptcy at the next bump in the economic road. Their only other choice is to remove their goods from Walmart's stores which, given Walmart's reach, would be tantamount to business suicide. This is the new reality and one entirely created by a company that did not exist fifty years ago.

The Walmart Effect is a revelatory examination of a remarkable company. Mr. Fishman, adopting a frank and conversational tone, walks the reader through not only Walmart's history, but the philosophy that has made it one of the first organizations to master the commercial opportunities of the global economy. From the humble wisdom of its founder to the everyday realities of its suppliers, the author discusses in glowing terms the delightful ways in which Walmart's single-minded devotion to the lowest price has improved the practices of countless companies, passing these savings onto the customer. We're invited to revel in the simple brilliance of a company that understands the basic human desire to get the best deal and not to be made to feel the fool, desires that Walmart has woven into the very fabric of their business.

However complimentary, The Walmart Effect in no way shrinks away from the company's dark side. Walmart's zealous pursuit of the lowest price has not only driven many of its suppliers out of business, it has forced many others to eliminate their unaffordable American workers and export their manufacturing needs to Asia where a toxic mixture of poverty and unenforced labor laws have created a fouls stew in which millions of desperate people are forced to toil for pennies. Walmart, like many other American retailers, makes all the appropriate noises about ensuring that it sources goods only from reputable suppliers, but these lame assurances ring utterly hollow, especially when one considers that Walmart would have to violate the core tenet of its belief system to avoid using virtually indentured workers. It would have to raise prices.

For all its virtues, The Walmart Effect, feels terribly dated. The degree to which it exposes Walmart's unforgivable insensitivity to the plight of those affected by its drive for efficiency is still relevant, but Mr. Fishman published his work in late 2005, before the rise of Amazon.com which, though still not as massive as Walmart, threatens the Arkansas giant's entire business model by offering the customer an opportunity to get the lowest price without even leaving his couch. Walmart's inability to combat amazon.com with a comparable online presence suggests that amazon will eventually consume Walmart once it can guarantee same-day delivery of its innumerable products. This is a consequential chapter of this story that Mr. Fishman did not foresee in 2005.

Nonetheless, this is a fascinating read. Walmart has undoubtedly done the customer a great service in making all manner of products more affordable, but in doing so it has helped to create a monstrous system of exploitation that cannot be ignored. Engaging work... (3/5 Stars)

A searing, riveting portrait of the Mexican Drug War in El Narco

From The Week of August 5th, 2013

Nations have narratives, a collection of facts and theories, stories and biases, that coalesce, over decades, into a fundamental mythology that is programmed into most, if not all, of its citizens. For successful nations, this is a largely positive outcome, primarily because it re-enforces those ennobled traits that have purportedly empowered them to the top of the heap. Yes, this comes at the expense of absolute truth, but this is a relatively small price to pay for having such a high bar set for subsequent generations. However, for nations who haven't enjoyed such success, this same mechanism re-enforces a sense of chaos and failure, a toxic stew that embitters all but the most pure of heart.

All of this belief is predicated on the notion that these mythologies are accurate, that they have tangible meaning for those alive today, but what if they don't? What if the fates of nations are determined less by the individual actions of those involved, but by a combination of environmental and circumstantial factors now centuries in the past? For failing states, such a train would be hard to turn around, especially in our modern world in which results are expected to be immediate. And yet, what else is there but to try? Ioan Grillo, here, documents just such an attempt.

For generations, Mexico has been a nation teetering on the brink of catastrophe. For much of its history, these crises were political in nature, as powerful men drew upon the destructiveness of armies to exert their will upon a country troubled by the noxious legacy of Spanish conquest. More recently, though, particularly as Mexico has made the slow, stuttering transition to democracy, these existential challenges have shifted into the much more complicated arenas of economics and social policy which possess contradictions and dilemmas that not even successful nations have ironed out. Unstable currencies, corrupted police forces and concentrated wealth have all taken their toll. And yet, combined, it is difficult to imagine them causing as much damage as Mexico's position on illegal drugs.

Unwisely taking its cue from the United States, Mexico has attempted to prohibit the sale of marijuana and narcotics in its country. But unlike the US, where stable judiciaries and largely honorable police forces keep the trade largely confined to ghettos and dark street corners, Mexico has been overwhelmed on three fronts: by a warmer climate agreeable to plantation of such crops, by widespread poverty that guarantees a steady supply of desperate souls who turn their hands to cultivating them, and by its proximity to South-American nations from which these drugs can profitably flow north and into the United States. Together, this mixed bag of incentives and misfortune has plunged Mexico into a war with a powerful group of highly trained, borderline psychotic, and profoundly motivated insurgents who will stop at nothing, not even butchery, to maintain their hold over an unfathomably profitable trade.

In El Narco, Mr. Grillo investigates these cartels. And by interviewing both its members and its victims, he creates a deeply moving portrait of Mexican life that has been transformed by thirty years of growing strife and deepening social divisions that are ripping the country apart. Seeing before them the most enticing of dangling carrots, the cartels have seized upon a means of acquiring wealth and power that is as old as civilization. And yet, through his narration of the unimaginable cruelty and depravity of their crimes, the author convinces us that the Mexican cartels are newer, more nightmarish beasts that have been nourished not only by Mexico's troubled present, but by its turbulent past in which infighting and discord prevented it from joining the United States in the league of thriving nations.

But while the cartels understandably occupy the core of this work, El Narco's most revelatory and wrenching passages are reserved for those who have had their lives shattered by them. From families forced to participate because of the sheer, dumb randomness of living in the wrong part of Mexico, to innocents who have been caught up and gunned down in the crossfire between the cartels and the Mexican army, and even to the men and women who have been raped and killed as a result of this terrible war, El Narco is a shattering demonstration of the randomness of life, of its preciousness, and of how quickly it can be snatched away. Granted, most of us do not need reminders of the fitfulness of the spark of life, and yet, it is something entirely else to see the blood and the pain spilled out over these 320 pages, to comprehend the twin cancers of grief and nihilism that grow from it. Their stories are impossible to turn away from.

There are no policy positions here. Mr. Grillo certainly seems sympathetic to those who argue for legalization, but how could he not? For while, to us, this may be an academic debate, albeit one steeped in bias and political ideology, prohibition is, for him, a remedy for a bloodbath. Legalization would undoubtedly de-fund the cartels to an extraordinary degree. And that the US has pressured Mexico not to do this out of its own cowardly self-interest, and that Mexico has itself not summoned the courage to do it on its own, is nothing less than a crime against humanity, an unwillingness to acknowledge the terrible cost of preventing people from doing as they choose so long as they do not harm anyone else in the doing. Other than this, though, Mr. Grillo chooses not to editorialize on guns, politics, or culture which, though consequential, seem almost shallow compared to the human stories that fill these pages.

Searing and mesmerizing... An absolute must-read... (5/5 Stars)

Petraeus, Counterinsurgency and the new US military in The Insurgents

From The Week of July 29th, 2013

There is no activity with which humanity has more familiarity than war. From the earliest tribes to present-day superpowers, it has been practiced so ubiquitously that it has defined the destinies of virtually every culture we've ever created. And yet, for all this expertise, we are, by and large, miserable, shortsighted wielders of the discipline, profoundly trapped by our biases of the enemy, an overinflated sense of our own martial past, and a rigid adherence to structure and tradition that eschews the bold in favor of the safe. Perhaps, in times past, when men like Alexander the Great could rise out of relative obscurity to conquer half the world, these afflictions were surmountable by the all-but-divine will of a single man, but in this age of massive armies and technological warfare, there is little room remaining for individual geniuses to operate and affect both their futures and those of the nations to which they've sworn fealty. Still, some will try. And Fred Kaplan has, here, chronicled at length the most famous of these revolutionaries.

The son of a librarian and a sea captain, David Petraeus has lived a remarkable life. From 1974 until his retirement from military service in 2011, he served the US Army with distinction, holding numerous commands both domestically, in the training of special forces, and overseas, in hot wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But though, by all reports, he was a relentlessly driven soldier with a legendary work ethic and capacity to endure punishment, he is best known for his defining role in championing the doctrine of Counterinsurgency, or COIN, which is credited with having helped to empower the Sunni Awakening of 2007 in Iraq which changed the fortunes of that doomed war dramatically, permitting the United States military to deal a devastating blow to Al-Qaeda and their allies. Though his application of COIN in Afghanistan would be less successful, it would do little to tarnish the reputation of this new, intellectually driven form of warfare.

Technology has forever changed our world and this is no more true than for the practice of war. Terrorism has empowered non-state actors, giving them the ability to stand up to much larger nations, at least for a time. Successfully eliminating these insurgent groups would require very different tactics than those nations have traditionally used. The holder of three degrees, David Petraeus believed so deeply in this consequential shift that he devoted his career to compelling the US Army to evolve, to be smaller, trimmer and smarter. After years in the wilderness, after having his reforms blocked by generals and defense secretaries uninterested in coloring outside the lines, he and several key allies both military and civilian, successfully agitated for a new approach to 21st-century warfare, one that relied upon cultivating the trust of leaders in the warzones in question and using those contacts to uproot the enemies hiding in their midst. And though ambition, along with a scandalous affair, would eventually doom his career, his disgrace would come long after he'd left his scholarly mark upon one of the world's most rigid institutions.

The Insurgents is a thorough, well-paced, and engrossing examination of the Counterinsurgency Doctrine and the men and women who fought for it in the face of stiff resistance from well-entrenched traditionalists eager to ignore the evolution of modern warfare. Mr. Kaplan, an author and journalist, uses David Petraeus' career as a focus, a touchstone from which he can cast a wide net that captures not only COIN and its impact on the United States' most recent wars, but the shambolic manner in which the US military is run. Given how infrequently the US military has been defeated, this would appear to be an absurd claim. And yet, this organization suffers from the kind of institutional rot present in all bloated organizations, a decay that results from the self-interested motivations of powerful individuals within the organization who, because they cannot be sure of their place in a changing environment, resist such change with all their might. One need only look at the manner in which the Iraq War was justified and then prosecuted to understand the shattering, real-world consequences of such stubbornness.

As much as the US military comes off poorly here, let it not be said that Mr. Kaplan is in the bag for David Petraeus and his famous doctrine. Quite the contrary. The author is clearly sceptical of the degree to which COIN influenced the outcome of the Iraq War. And he's wise to be. For it seems almost impossible to separate COIN's impact from the abject misery of local Iraqis who, having finally had enough of being victimized by thuggish Al-Qaeda, rebelled against them and, with the eager aid of the United States, crushed their operations. Given that the whole purpose of COIN is to give breathing space for good people to organize against the destructive elements inside their own societies, it is hard to argue that COIN was not a benefit in Iraq, but its fairly evident failure to improve the situation in Afghanistan is a serious blow to its credibility. COIN's defenders will argue that Afghanistan is a uniquely atomized country, one that simply cannot be fairly governed in the modern world and, given its miserable history, that may well be true, but this in no way helps COIN's case.

The Insurgents has its sketchy moments. It seems evident that this book had all-but-come to print when the story of Petraeus' affair broke, compelling Mr. Kaplan to pen a hasty and uninformative coda to his chronicle. Moreover, the author doesn't appear to have had any access to Petraeus himself which is somewhat problematic given the heavily biographical nature of the work. However, these are minor knitpicks in what is otherwise a balanced, rational account of two bad wars, the men who prosecuted them and the ideas that bubbled up to impact them.

An excellent primer on the new face of war... (4/5 Stars)

A profoundly disturbing look at a disintegrating American city in Detroit

From The Week of July 29th, 2013

Urban decay is a scourge on the modern world. The natural outgrowth of economic systems that discourage centralized planning, they are unsightly and unsafe. But for as much as abandoned blocks and decrepit buildings may offend our sense of aesthetics, the extent to which they degrade the spirits of those exposed to them, draining them of hope and passion, is their truest and profoundest sin. For this cancer, once rooted in the hearts and minds of people who feel as abandoned by society as their neighborhoods are of people, cannot easily be taken out. It must be bulldozed and paved over, in the hope that the new will make everyone forget the old. And yet, that damage is generational, ensuring that it will linger as long as there's anyone around to remember. This is a lesson taught with chilling effect by this mesmerizing volume from Charlie LeDuff.

Once a thriving hub of industry and wealth, Detroit, Michigan has reached rock bottom. Forty years of White Flight, corrupt politicians and automotive decline have reduced its population by half, made a sham of its city government and exposed its remaining citizens, 82 percent of whom are African American, to the kind of impoverished, urban decay more in line with the Third World than the First. This rot is most consequentially reflected in the city's emergency services which are slow, inadequate and profoundly underfunded, resulting in obscene waiting times for 911 calls that would trigger hearings in other cities. But it's most obviously represented in the city's vacancy rate which experts peg at somewhere between 25 and 40 percent, meaning that, at best, an entire quarter of Detroit has been completely abandoned by citizens looking for hope under other lights.

Charlie LeDuff knows this all too well. Having grown up in the midst of this long, devastating collapse, he moved away to pursue a career in journalism before Detroit's siren song called him home to a position at the Detroit News where he began to document the city's decomposition. From this post, he spent several years wading through government corruption and civic crime, all while ruminating on the ways in which Detroit devoured him and his family, claiming the life of his sister, the joy of his mother and the self-respect of his brother. These observations, alongside his own failings, leave little doubt of just how monumental Detroit's fall from grace has been.

Detroit is a shattering piece of gonzo journalism. Comprised of Mr. LeDuff's experiences while working at the Detroit News, its narrative is explosively propelled by the author's disgust with his and the city's failings which are entwined to wonderful and shocking effect. The reader is exposed to abandoned neighborhoods and decaying courthouses, beleaguered firemen and crooked judges, their collective stories weaving a tapestry of life in the heartland of American decline. One would naturally expect this to be a difficult and challenging experience, but such is Mr. LeDuff's skill, and such is the overpowering nature of his subject, that the reader is often left gobsmacked by the depths to which this poor place has sunk.

Though the personal nature of this account is its greatest virtue, compelling the rubbernecking reader to look past the atavistic excitement of a train wreck and to the real damage that's eventuated as a result of unchecked corruption and decay, its most memorable punches are saved for some of the local customs. Mr. LeDuff contends that Detroiters will buy cans of gasoline which they use to set vacant houses on fire, entertainment for the whole family for less than the cost of a movie ticket. Such anecdotes, which one expects to only find in dystopian novels, do more in one sentence than thousand-page reports to convey the unfathomable degree to which Detroiters have been altered by their environment. Gentrification and urban planning need no other advertisement than this.

Detroit is not without flaws. One senses that Mr. LeDuff enjoys a good story. And given the appalling disposition of his subject, it's easy to imagine that some of the details here have been exaggerated. For instance, every poignant episode seems to conveniently include an appropriately profound quote from one bystander or another. Perhaps the author is merely lucky to be have been in the right place at the right time, but the frequency of these lucky moments seems a bit too high for comfort. That said, this is also part of gonzo journalism's appeal, an intense subjectivity that draws us into the world at the expense of objective truth. So it's not as though exaggerations aren't expected.

A profound experience. It would be a hard heart that remained unmoved for the having of it. One of my best reads this year... (4/5 Stars)

The devastating history of eugenics chronicled in War Against the Weak

From The Week of July 8th, 2013

Though the question of what we individually owe to our fellow man is the pressing, sociological issue of this new, global civilization, there's an equally important debate to be had. What do we owe the least fortunate among us? From the mentally ill to the physically deficient, millions of people never receive a fair shot at a successful life. Is this merely a necessary outgrowth of a democratic, capitalist system, that some of us simply will be left behind, or is this inequality a consequence of poor ethics and poor morals? Perhaps, some day, we will have answers to these questions. Perhaps one will help solve the other. But until that day, we have only our past actions to go by. And where misfits are concerned, this is decidedly grim, a truth relentlessly demonstrated in Edwin Black's thorough examination of eugenics.

A scientific movement that grew out of nineteenth-century revelations of the remarkable role evolution plays in the advancement of life on Earth, eugenics is an ethical framework that argues for the purification of the human species through proper breeding and genetic engineering. Popular in the first half of the 20th century, it was originally confined to agricultural and horticultural fields before being seized upon by scientists and philosophers as a means by which to eliminate human malformations. After all, would the world not be better if disabilities from Spina bifida to blindness could be erased from the gene pool? Imagine the benefits to society if it, and its people, could be relieved of the costs of caring for those who, because of some genetic deficiency, cannot care for themselves.

However innocent the origins of this view of humanity's future, eugenics soon took on a sinister air, made all the more obvious with hindsight. For how could the enfeebled and the disabled be trusted to remove themselves from the gene pool? Would it not be prudent for society to sterilize them as a means of assuring that such genetic mistakes would die out with them? Armed with scientific funding from powerful, turn-of-the-century trusts, an American organization set out to lobby state legislatures to pass sweeping laws that would make commonplace the forced exclusion of deficients from the gene pool. Drawing on biased, reprehensible science, the American Breeders Association became a haven for racial purists who disseminated their ugly conclusions not only throughout North America, but to a receptive Europe eager to have its white, Nordic superiority re-affirmed by sham science. Of these new, European adherents, none were as enthusiastic as the group of German scientists who would go onto play key roles in Hitler's attempted extermination of the Jewish population, participating, in the name of eugenics, the worst crime in modern history.

A lacerating account of the history of eugenics, War Against The Weak is a shattering examination of one of organized science's darkest hours. Mr. Black, who possesses a first-class mind for research, has not only assembled an authoritative account of the attempt by a small group of humans to play god over the future of an entire species; he has brought to light, with color and compassion, the many thousands of souls who suffered at their hands. For the eugenics movement was not a victimless crime. It was not simply a foolish idea rooted in a series of unfortunate misapprehensions. It was a systematic attempt to strip groups of innocent people of their basic human rights, passing judgement on them in a manner that is both abhorrent and obscene. From the American Breeders Association's first steps into the arena of public policy, through to the unimaginable Holocaust into which it eventuated, the work reveals the corporations and the actors, the governments and the bodies that sought to destroy the individual freedoms we all hold so dear.

Though the work's most obvious quality is its exceptional thoroughness -- Mr. Black presents the reader with pages and pages of sources that must have taken years to organize and compile --, its most enduring virtue is the manner in which it exposes us to an inescapable truth about the human mind, that it is unavoidably biased. Shaped by its social, cultural and economic environments, and hardened by personal experience, it favors conclusions it likes and ignores those it finds unpleasant. In this, it creates for the individual a narrowed view of the world that, while agreeable to the individual's sensibilities, is colored in the extreme. We now know, thanks to the work of both social and scientific crusaders, that the physical, intellectual and emotional differences between the races are at best negligible. And yet, seeking to find an explanation that justified their distaste for the tide of non-white, non-Nordic ethnicities flooding into their homeland, these eugenicists created pseudo science, convinced receptive governments of its voracity, and then implemented a program of social engineering criminal in its intent and tragic in its scope.

War Against the Weak has its blind spots. For all its rigor, Mr. Black's account is nonetheless a polemic against eugenics. He has no time for seemingly any argument in its favor. Given eugenics' costs, this is understandable, though, regrettable. We should be able to have a debate about what society owes the individual. We should be able to have discussions about the blessings of genetic engineering. But these are areas now profoundly poisoned by the sins of our past, certainly where the author is concerned.

An absolute must-read for anyone even mildly interested in science, justice and human nature... (5/5 Stars)

The techniques of modern counter-terrorists revealed in The Terror Factory

From The Week of July 1st, 2013

Though technology will eventually liberate human civilization from all forms of political control, government is, for the moment, a necessary evil for the continuance of our march towards a brighter future. For until we can delegate the functions of the societal machine to impartial and intelligent algorithms, organized around the public good while being immune from public pressure, this messy assemblage of technocrats and politicians is the best and only way to regulate commerce, normalize international relations and lend aid to the less fortunate. In order for them to perform these duties, however, governments must be given considerable power over our individual and collective affairs, a reality which eventually, and inevitably, tempts them to seize yet more power in the aim of doing more good. Rarely has this truism been better exemplified than in Trevor Aaronson's shattering examination of the counter-terrorism policies of the FBI.

Despite numerous presidential statements calling for American citizens to exonerate mainstream Islam for Al-Qaeda's nihilistic attack on the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001, the United States' intelligence agencies have spent the years since 9/11 alienating the Muslim community. Employing a series of strongarm tactics, they have aggressively recruited both willing and unwilling informants within targeted communities and unleashed them upon people of interest, individuals who have, through anger or foolishness, braggadocio or malice, harbored some intent to harm the United States. Prior to 9/11, this would not have been possible. For not only did the FBI not possess the financial resources to execute such missions, they lacked the networks of human spies necessary to carry them out.

Since 9/11, however, these chains, which once prevented the FBI and its sister agencies from digging into every dark corner of American life, have been lifted, an evolution that has allowed these agencies to infiltrate religious institutions and everyday businesses, all in the aim of preventing the next attack. But though this is a commendable goal, one that a majority of the populous would undoubtedly support, their tactics have been as crude as the informants they've paid to execute them. And though the these agencies claim numerous successes in this dirty war against extremist elements, their methods have been so manipulative, so self-serving, that they've sparked some to wonder just how legitimate the attacks they've prevented actually were.

Enter The Terror Factory, a devastating catalogue of government misdeeds. Mr. Aaronson, an American journalist, investigates the high-profile prosecutions of terrorists since 9/11 in a manner so systematic, so unrelenting, that he leaves the reader gasping in horror at the sheer audacity of government agencies who, in acting in the name of society's protection, are willing to bend-unto-breaking every law cherished by the citizens they are charged to protect. Informant by informant, victim by victim, the author explores the anatomy of this system of government-sanctioned entrapment of immigrants made vulnerable by Byzantine laws that leave them open to the threat of deportation if they fail to become double agents for counter-terrorist agents who are, in turn, in no way disincentivized to act reasonably, cautiously, or with much respect for the broken lives they leave behind. No price is too high when the stakes are the protection of the homeland.

This is far from a neutral account of this shadow world of informants and their sting operations. In particular, Mr. Aaronson devotes little time to trying to assess the guilt of the individuals caught up in the FBI's various nets. In fact, some of these individuals appear, superficially, to be quite willing to carry out attacks on the scale of 9/11. However, for all his reluctance to speak to the ugliness of some of these characters, the author's point supersedes such concerns. After all, whether or not one harbors the desire to commit a terrorist attack is entirely apart from whether or not one is willing to actually plan it, collect the means to do it and then to execute it. That the FBI eagerly enables these individuals to take all three of these fateful steps merely to arrest them and parade them for the world to see, is abhorrent. That they do so seemingly indifferent to the fact that they have recruited thousands of morally dubious, and sometimes outright criminal, spies in order to complete this self-beneficial mission is tragic.

The Terror Factory is a mesmerizing read that makes it abundantly clear that the United States will stop at nothing to prevent another large-scale terrorist attack on its soil. That it does so at the expense of all its hard-won principles is nothing short of frightening, not only for its citizens but for the rest of the world as well. (4/5 Stars)

Faith, justice and innocence all go missing in Redrum The Innocent

From The Week of June 17th, 2013

As much as we plan and dream, organize and hope, our lives are beyond our control. We live in a world of billions, a world in which, every day, countless people make decisions that have an impact on both our present and our future. We can't resist that. We lack the knowledge and the power to turn back that flood. And so we ignore it, concentrating on what we can change, on what we can see affecting us in the moment. This is a much more palatable existence, one that gives us the illusion of command. But what happens when that illusion is shattered? What happens when our lives are turned upside down by events we could no more predict than we could accept? What are we then? And how do we survive? Kirk Makin ruminates in his sprawling work of non-fiction.

On October 3rd, 1984, Christine Jessop, a playful, adventurous, nine-year-old girl living in Queensville, Ontario, vanished without a trace from her quiet, suburban home, shocking a community unfamiliar with such terrible events. Over the next three months, fuelled by her mother's hope for the girl's safe return, the police and the public would undertake a regional search for little Christine, one that would end in tears when her broken body was found some 50 miles from her home, in woods frozen by winter. With only a few suspects and even less evidence, investigators soon locked in on Guy Paul Morin, the Jessops' eccentric, 24-year-old neighbor who, though lacking any sort of motive, much less a criminal history, was extensively questioned by cops increasingly eager to find their man. Their suspicions were only strengthened when they learned that Morin declined to join the extensive, public search for Christine, in the desperate days just after her disappearance.

Using hair and fiber samples taken from Morin and his car, police would eventually arrest Morin, charging him with Christine's murder. Fixated by his social awkwardness, they would spend the next year largely ignoring other suspects, SHAPING what few pieces of evidence they had into a case against Morin that would lead to two controversial and contentious trials, the second of which would finally convict him of a crime he did not commit. This truth, however, would only come to light in 1995, 14 months after his conviction, when newly developed DNA techniques would rule out his involvement with Christine. This shameful miscarriage of justice would conclude with a 1997 inquiry which excoriated the police and the judiciary, accusing the former of leaping to unsupported conclusions and recommending that the latter change its prejudicial procedures. But none of this would help Guy Paul Morin regain his life. Nor would it return Christine to a Jessop family shattered by her disappearance.

As shattering as it is revelatory, Redrum The Innocent is Mr. Makin's extensive chronicle of both the murder of Christine Jessop and the judicial farce that would attempt to identify and punish her killer. Drawing on dozens of interviews with the principals and countless hours spent observing Morin's two trials, the author masterfully weaves together the personal and the professional, painting intimate portraits of the prime movers while methodically laying out the dubious evidence used to first hound and then to imprison an innocent man. Between, Mr. Makin systematically savages the case against Morin, not only revealing its shoddy construction, but detailing the unforgivable extent to which police fixated on Morin, contorting the facts to better fit their assumptions of his guilt. His efforts here are so thorough, so overwhelming, that they leave the reader's faith in the judicial system deeply shaken.

There is no doubt that Redrum The Innocent is at its most potent when describing the ways in which the police bungled the investigation of Christine Jessop's murder. In fairness, the cops in question were neither trained nor prepared to handle such a complex and difficult case. None of their rural charm, or good ol' boy instincts would help them find their man. For the degree to which they were overwhelmed by what unfolded, we can have sympathy. However, what we cannot tolerate, much less accept, is the degree to which the police refused to acknowledge their own inadequacy. Instead of welcoming outside assistance, they fell back on interdivisional rivalries out of the selfish desire to claim the glory of finding Christine's killer. This hunger would lead them to not only manipulate evidence and coach witnesses as a means of firming up the case against Morin, it would cause them to unforgivably dismiss the leads that might have lead to Christine's killer. As a consequence of hurling all their energies at an innocent man, the killer was never found, a fact which has left the Jessop family in ruins.

If this is the work's travesty, its tragedy is saved for the Morins and the Jessops, two families smashed by this ordeal. As a result of the harsh light of the investigation, secrets and lies are forced out of the shadows, truths nearly as cruel as the murder itself. This endless, grinding process of lurching towards something like justice leaves the reader hollowed out, hoping for some measure of peace, of justice, that never comes. We should be better than this. It should be easier than this. Alas...

Redrum The Innocent could have used an edit trim some of its 750 pages. Nonetheless, it is, in every other respect, a mesmerizing read that withstands the test of time. For though its subject is primarily the murder of a young girl, the ways in which it branches out to speak about the law, society and human nature is timeless. A must-read... (4/5 Stars)

Honor killings, multiculturalism and a horrific murder in Honour on Trial

From The Week of June 17th, 2013

Multiculturalism has, and will likely always be, problematic. For though many of the world's countries pride themselves on open borders and hospitable populations founded on notions of generosity and the will to be free, humanity has spent the bulk of its history as a species in homogeneous environments, ensconced in tribes and lands where everyone walked and talked like everyone else. Certainly, there were exceptions, particularly in the most recent millennia in which technologies that allowed for large empires were deployed to conquer other lands, but these centuries are but the tip of the iceberg poking out of the waters of our evolutionary past.

As a consequence, human beings living in multicultural environments experience a quiet tension, one that pits the wisdom of their cultural enlightenment against the suspicion of their genetic makeup. While times are good, with crime low and jobs plentiful, wisdom wins out. But when times are difficult and money scarce, like for like takes the day, causing suspicion of the unknown to override judgement and for cynicism to replace kindness, a matter made all the worse when this multiculture is forced to grapple with crimes it cannot imagine, emanating from backgrounds with which it has only a passing knowledge. This is a truth chillingly rendered in Paul Schliesmann's brisk work of true crime.

For Canada, a country that has never experienced a high rate of crime, relative to much of the world, the Shafia Family murders came as a severe shock. An honor killing that claimed the lives of three teenaged daughters of a successful, immigrant family from Afghanistan, then living in Montreal, it would launch a three year odyssey beginning with a lengthy police investigation and concluding with a high-profile trial in which Mohammad Shafia, the family patriarch, Hamed, his son, and Tooba, his second wife, would stand accused of executing a cruel plot to drown the three young women, along with Rona, Mohammad's first wife, in a Kingston Mills Lock. It would take time for a motive to emerge for such a terrible and senseless crime, but eventually an chilling image of the family would take shape, one colored by tribal customs transported to the new world, customs that endow females with family honor to such a degree that any significant act of disobedience brings a stain upon the family that can only be cleansed with blood. This would prove to be true of the three Shafia daughters who, having once agreed not to date boys, broke with their eastern customs to embrace the western culture in which they were immersed. For this, they died in the cold and the darkness.

A thorough primer of the Shafia murders and the complex trial that would follow on from them, Honour on Trial is a read as swift as it is informative. Mr. Schliesmann, a Canadian journalist, possesses a newsman's prose, pages stripped of any sense of excess or flair. In its place, cold, hard facts which paint a portrait of events that are as clear as they are difficult to stomach. In this vein, the author makes no judgement calls about the Shafia family, leaving such editorializing to others. Instead, he uses established truths to depict the tragic, senseless course of events with heart-sinking deliberation, leaving little room for doubt.

For those looking for a simple chronicle of events, Honour on Trial serves admirably, but the Shafia case demand more than this. This was not only a murder. This was the premeditated killing of four women for reasons that are inescapably barbaric. Yes, we must be sensitive to the customs of other cultures, to embrace them and weave them into the fabric of who we are. But we must test those customs against not only our ethics, but the widely acknowledged human rights that should exist for all individuals. Any customs that fail that test, that violate the rights to be free for which countless people have fought, then those are customs we can all rightfully reject, leaving them in the dust of history along with every other unenlightened, self-serving notion that we've evolved out of. But for a brief section describing honor killings and the causes that give rise to them, Mr. Schliesmann fails to articulate this important point.

Every day, innocence is lost because of ignorance, because of customs that are not knocked down by exposure to other cultures. This is multiculturalism's value, a test of who we are against the values of others, a crucible from which reasoned truth can emerge. If only such enlightenment did not have to come at such a terrible cost... (3/5 Stars)

Human folly and the power of Malaria clash in Shah's The Fever

From The Week of April 1, 2013

From trees to tigers, from eagles to kelp, evolution has shaped our world for billions of years. Without it, Earth would be little more than a volcanically active water world with a few single-celled organisms listlessly occupying various oceanic vents and superficial pools. There would be no other life, nothing to revel and no one to do the revelling. It is, then, a necessary driver of permanent change. But for all that humanity would not exist without evolution's many gifts, it also presents some problems. For what worked to create us can just as easily work to create things to kill us. Evolution was not a means to our end. It is a means to the development of life. And for all that we may have outpaced our fellow species on the race to intellect, we have not, and never will, corner the market on the right to exist. This is made chillingly clear in Sonia Shah's sweeping biography of a most pernicious and persistent disease.

For nearly half the lifespan of the human species, Malaria has infected our world. Generated from pools of stagnant water in which mosquito larvae happily grow, this crippling illness spreads from these humid nurseries in the saliva of female mosquitos who, with every successful attack upon a living target, inject Malaria's devastating payload into the bloodstreams of their unwitting victims. From there, the disease spreads to the liver, a base from which it can, over the next few weeks, cause havoc to its host, lashing it with debilitating fevers and headaches which, if sufficiently severe, can be fatal. Even if malaria was self-aware, though, it would not care about these consequences of its existence. For its only purpose is to exist. And this it achieves by infecting the blood of the host, blood which is then slurped up by other mosquitos eager for a meal.

So what can be done about this? Ever since humanity has had the tools to battle disease, it has been fighting Malaria. But though there have been soem successes in creating medicines that armor uninfected hosts against Malaria's impact, there is, as yet, no vaccine. Worse yet, some of the agents developed to fight Malaria have strengthened the disease, bestowing it with teeth it once did not require. Failures in the medicinal front have turned inquisitive minds to the prospect of chemically eradicating Malaria's delivery system, the mosquito, efforts that famously culminated in the widespread application of DDT, a wonder insecticide that soon proved to be a poison chalice. Hopes remain for a vaccine, but until then malaria persists, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives a year.

Depicting the pathological, sociological, medical and evolutionary histories of Malaria and its impact on the world, The Fever is a stark account of ingenuity and failure. Ms. Shah weaves a terrifying tapestry of Malaria's causes and effects, a dismaying portrait matched only by her tragic, and at times shocking, account of humanity's calamitous attempts to eliminate this most effective infectious disease. Tales of failed drugs, boastful promises and arrogant assumptions culminate in a truly disturbing portrait of the degree to which humanity leaps before it looks. For so eager are we for cures to the afflictions that trouble our days that we are willing to apply them before we fully understand their consequences, a hastiness that has lead to unimaginable ecological damage.

As much as Ms. Shah's account reserves its most effective blows for these failures, it is equally free with praise for the low-tech methods we've developed to fight Malaria. From mosquito nets to the draining of the stagnant pools that are malaria's breeding ground, the disease has been forced to retreat from many parts of the world. Unfortunately for the impoverished, however, most of these retreats have occurred in the developed world, causing Malaria to be, much like AIDS, a problem experienced by others, elsewhere.

The Fever might well have done with some first-hand accounts of Malaria's impact, the better to exemplify Ms. Shah's arguments. Nonetheless, it is a riveting demonstration of how little we actually control our world and how much we rely upon systems like evolution, that are far older than us, for defenses against the threats that live and grow across Earth's ecology. Wonderfully edifying... (4/5 Stars)

A ringing condemnation of prisons in Abramsky's American Furies

From The Week of March 25, 2013

Of the many pillars of progress that have marked humanity's existence none have had more of an impact than civilization. For it is this gestalt of societal evolution that creates beautiful structure from tribal chaos, that sews together peaceful communities from antagonistic cultures, and that carves out harbors of innovation to elevate us above stagnancy. Our thoughts and our dreams, our extraordinary brothers and our earth-shaking sisters are all remembered by civilization which allows each successive generation of the species to stand on the shoulders of those who came before. And yet, not all of us contribute positively to civilization. In fact, there are a substantial number who, for various reasons, threaten civilization with strains of destructive violence that range from the nihilistic to the greedy. Are we not entitled to seal these criminals away? Is it not right that we remove from them the freedoms the rest of us enjoy? Perhaps, but to think that we do so without consequences would be deeply unwise. This point Mr. Abramsky drives home in his uneven work.

In much of the world, prisons are stressful and dangerous places, institutions that contain the worst humanity has to offer. For years on end, men and women who have broken society's laws endure in these hard places, suffering a kind of purgatory in hopes that, some day, they will be released back into the world and have restored to them the privileges they once enjoyed. This is the hope. But so scarring are these penitenturies, so fraught with animalistic violence and cognitive decay, that this is nothing more than wishful thinking, dreams one holds to when nothing else remains.

It was not meant to be this way. In the breathy reforms of the post-Renaissance West, where it was no longer sufficient simply to execute troublemakers, prisons were conceived of as places of rehabilitation, idealistic schools of reform that would capture destructive non-conformists and shape them into healthy, stable influences. But while some penal systems still notionally cling to this hopeful ethos, the United States does not. Despite drastic reductions in crime over the last 40 years, more and more Americans, every year, are forced into these violent pens, compelled to sleep, eat and endure alongside society's worst. Many of these offenders haven't even committed violent crimes. And yet, here they languish, either worked for pennies or neglected to count down their days, with rapists and murderers, pimps and traffickers, until they can rejoin a society that will only ever half-heartedly welcome them back.

From Jeremy Bentham's optimistic conceptions to the cold, present-day realities, from the harshness of Joe Arpaio's Arizona to the ruthlessness of Miriam Shehane's Alabama, American Furies seeks to chronicle, through statistics and anecdotal accounts, the price, both fiscally and societally, the United States has paid for its punitive approach to crime. Mr. Abramsky, who leaves no doubt that his sympathies lean heavily towards the imprisoned, lays before the reader a series of movements and societal attitudes that go some way to explaining the heartlessness with which Americans approach incarceration. His conclusion, that a toxic combination of the depravity of sensationalist crime and the ongoing privatization of the prison system has lead the US to its current state -- a higher percentage of its people behind bars than Stalinist Russia -- is passionately argued. And yet, there are profound flaws here.

As strong a case as Mr. Abramsky makes, his account tries to be all things and succeeds at none of them. He attempts to make two cases, one based in dry statistics and the other ground in hard reporting. And yet, when he combines his academic research with his face-to-face gum-shoeing, the result does not become a pleasing souffle of passion and erudition. It does not become, as the author so clearly wishes it to be, a declarative statement against the evils of American-style incarceration. It is, instead, a scattered jog through an ever-changing landscape of shifty characters and inferred agendas that imply a great deal but conclusively prove little.

This is not to imply that I disagree with Mr. Abramsky. His argument rests on firm ground. There's been a great deal of sociological research that has attempted to explain the rise of the prison population and why that rise has suspiciously corresponded with the building of new prisons. However, Mr. Abramsky's goal here was to distill that research into a work of narrative non-fiction, capped off with a passionate appeal for understanding and sympathy for prisoners, many of whom are non-violent offenders. And, sadly, that task he failed to accomplish.

Valuable, but ultimately uninspired. The American prisoner will have to rest their hopes for a brighter future on other shoulders. (2/5 Stars)

A mesmerizing look inside the secretive perfume industry in The Perfect Scent

From The Week of March 18, 2013

Where there's wealth there's luxury. From the tribal leaders who collected gold and baubles to the corporate executives who accumulate diamonds and beach houses, this has been true for thousands of years. After all, what better way to signal one's importance, one's power, than to possess worthless trinkets and then ascribe value to them, to their scarcity? It is a means by which to express success and nothing more. And yet, thanks to capitalism's power to create wealth, luxuries are today a booming industry, aspirational brands that together are not only worth billions, but that have the power to announce one's arrival upon society's stage. Fine hats and expensive bags, priceless coats and be jewelled watches... These are today's gold goblets and steel-tipped arrows. These are our trinkets. For all of our enlightenment, our education, this trick still works. This lesson underpins Mr. Burr's excellent and entertaining work.

Of the many expressions of luxury, few are as potent as perfume. Considered a key weapon in the arsenal of the numerous secretive luxury houses that dominate the western world, it has been produced in a dizzying array of packages and compositions, from the innocent to the sexy, from the stayed to the eccentric, all in an attempt to obtain the perfect distillation of power and style that will not only cause humans the world over to surrender their wealth to possess it, but signal to those within range of its wearers that they are something special. Its seductions are predicated upon the evocative clout of the human sense of smell which, when activated, has an unparalleled ability to conjure up memories both new and old and, through this momentary connection, transport wearers to other places, other times.

In 2005 and 2007, first in Paris and then in New York, Mr. Burr was allowed a unique perspective of this secretive industry when, as a writer for the New York times, he was invited to write profiles of two very different perfumes. The first was Nil by Jean-Claude Ellena, a second-generation French perfumer, who was attempting to give Herme, the storied luxury house, a successful perfume to add to their other product lines. The second was Lovely by Sarah Jessica Parker, an industry hit that grew out of the Sex-And-The-City star's desire to realize a dream, to bring to market a perfume that expressed her own sense of sexuality. Through these two experiences, Mr. Burr ventures into the mysterious world of perfume, a 25-billion-dollar industry whose secretiveness is legendary and whose old-world practices seem decidedly out-of-step with modern reality and economics.

Though at times unflinchingly raw, The Perfect Scent is nonetheless a delightful expose of the world of perfume. Mr. Burr, who balances his fondness for his two subjects (Parker and Ellena) with searing critiques of the industry in which they toil, is an engaging guide into a world most of us know nothing about. Step by meticulous step, he details the industry's practices and biases, revealing not only the creative genius poured into dreaming up these exotic scents, but the stodgy management that decides which of them will go to market and which will be condemned to waste away in some forgotten cupboard, never to be savored by the people who invest so much money in these strange but evocative distillations of our world.

Though Mr. Burr's characterizations of Parker and Ellena leave the reader enchanted with their humility and arrogance, confidence and vision, it is the process by which perfume is created that steals the show. The author describes in fascinating detail the degree to which perfumery has been reduced to an alchemical science, leaving vivid in the minds of his readers the image of a lonely master unpacking the various components of a half-remembered scent and committing its ingredients to paper, measuring their weights, shooting this chemical breakdown off to a lab where these scribblings are given form, molecules precisely combined and returned to the perfumer for the examination of his nose. This singular hunt, to actualize an idea and then to perfect it, makes for a mesmerizing read, one that sports few imperfections. For though Mr. Burr may at times evince a certain infatuation with Parker and Ellena, this never strays into the kind of obsequiousness that would have obscure the truths present in his entwined tales.

Enchanting work made all the more powerful for providing the reader with knowledge of an otherwise unknowable world. One of my best reads this year... (5/5 Stars)

The sins of Scientology revealed in Lawrence Wright's Going Clear

From The Week of January 21, 2013
While the right to freely practice ones chosen faithmust be considered a fundamental right of any free state, there can be no doubt that it is a right that comes at a grievous cost. For while the world is bettered by the good works of the peaceful multitudes who faithfully hold with creeds out of the need to believe in something greater than themselves, it is also darkened by those other practitioners, men and women who twist, pervert and prey upon our need for salvation to sew unimaginable misery. It does not matter what corrosive force motivates these madmen, revenge, ego, spite, or even envy; it matters only that the world has been blighted by their existences, the lives of innocents corrupted by the chains that bind them to these preachers and prophets.

And so we come to the vital questions. How can we guard the innocent without violating their right to practice? How do we distinguish between a cult and a religion as a means of stamping out the former while respecting the latter? How can we promote the values of the good while minimizing the damage of the unhealthy? These are weighty queries which may not be answered any time soon, but perhaps we can come closer to an answer by studying the anatomy of a cult. This Mr. Wright has most thoroughly done in Going Clear.

Though it has been a faith for less than 60 years, Scientology has left its mark on the world. Teachings distilled from the life and times of L. Ron Hubbard, a prolific American author of science fiction with a penchant for bending the truth, it is the systematic attempt to rid oneself of burdensome influences as a means of elevating ones spirit and enabling ones dreams. Through great discipline and concentration, through the rigorous deployment of honest self-examination, the scientologist ascends through the ranks of his faith, each plateau revealing to him more secrets of his religion, secrets carefully measured out in order to encourage him to continue seeking the pinnacle of purity. This seems innocent enough; the world can hardly be made the poorer for having yet another faith capable of providing a ladder up which the struggling can climb to peace and enlightenment. And yet, Scientology has a darker side, one that hides behind the Hollywood glamour that so often shields it from scrutiny.

Scientology is more than a religion; it is a machine for making money. Promising to be the owner's manual with which the troubled can be lead out of darkness, it encourages its adherents to surrender their self-determination to their elders who, by dint of being higher in the church, ostensibly have the best interests of their souls in mind. Money in exchange for knowledge, service in exchange for enlightenment... The faith may be new, but the game is ancient, a truth Mr. Wright documents here in stunning detail. For while Scientology may put handsome faces to the world, Tom Cruise and John Travolta to name but two, it is built atop the labors of thousands of faceless souls sold into its servitude, souls blackmailed into continued obedience through the heavy-handed use of confessions practitioners are all-but forced to make. It is the gestalt of the voiceless and the vulnerable upon whom it rests. Their names, their deeds and their punishments occupy these pages.

Going Clear is mesmerizing work. Building upon a thorough biography of L. Ron Hubbard, a fevered genius whose desperate need to be a hero lead him into the seductive arms of megalomania, Mr. Wright uses the experiences of dozens of men and women to capture a stunning portrait of one of the world's most successful young faiths. From its secrets to its rituals, from sea voyages to Hollywood screenings, Mr. Wright weaves a portrait of a belief system that capitalizes on the credulity of innocents and the desperation of the lost to forge for itself a powerbase from which it cannot be challenged. Endless research and informative prose march us through the faith's history, from its inception as an outgrowth of Hubbard's ego through to its acknowledgement, t least by the government of the United States, as a religion worthy of the First Amendment's protection, a decision that, to this day, bewilders parts of the world who clearly view Scientology as nothing short of a cult.

Those who sympathize with Scientology will find cause to criticize Mr. Wright's work regardless of its rigor, but rational readers will find here an exceptionally researched document that is supported by extensive interviews with key men and women within Scientology. Their harrowing tales provide the work its most devastating punch by acknowledging that Scientology utilizes child labor and perhaps even stoops to child enslavement, as a means of compelling enlightenment. Practices that would land regular citizens in jail for years at a stretch are commonplace in Scientology which hides behind the firewall of the first Amendment to escape responsibility for these crimes. For they are crimes, make no mistake, crimes of coercion, crimes of violence, crimes of bigotry and crimes of self-delusion, all of which leave in their wake the wreckage of lives that will not be easily mended.

Mr. Wright won himself great respect with his examination of the lives and deeds that paved the road to 9/11. He only furthers his status as a first-rate researcher and revealer of truth with Going Clear. Outstanding work marred only by its minor fixation with Scientology's Hollywood overtones. (5/5 Stars)

An American Insurrection honors a forgotten moment in battle for civil rights

From The Week of January 14, 2013
Historical firsts are never easy and rarely peaceful. For as much as we may wish otherwise, humans resist change, some to such a degree that violence and hatred results from change being forced upon them by an evolving world. And yet nothing can ever stay as it was, and nor should it. For the progress of humanity is a march out of the darkness of ignorance and into the light of respect and understanding for all creeds, all genders, all races and all lifestyles. It is a march towards universal acceptance that rests on but one enduring principle, that the individual is free to decide how he ought to live so long as his choices do not harm others. This is our destiny. And yet arriving at such an obvious truth is, sadly, for some, cause for apocalypse. This lesson is decisively driven home in Mr. Doyle's shattering chronicle of racial integration in 1960s america.

With one of its most landmark decisions, the supreme Court of the United States, in 1954, ordered that all schools in America freely integrate their classes with no eye to racial bias. This ruling, a critical catalyst for the battles for civil rights that would characterize the next twenty years of American life, was accepted, with varying degrees of trepidation, in a majority of this sprawling country except for one notable and predictable exception, the American South where this repugnant decree came as just the latest federal insult in a long line of slights from a national government whose authority they only reluctantly acknowledged. This cynicism, the legacy of the South's defeat in the Civil War, was alive and well a hundred years after that great schism, so much so that the governor of Mississippi felt bold enough to not only resist the Supreme Court's decision but to oppose it with such rhetorical force that violence was inevitable.

For several years, Mississippi, along with other Southern States, refused to integrate, a provocative show of insubordination to the state that culminated in September of 1962 when James Meredith, a veteran of the integrated US military compelled, through the pursuit of the law, the federal government to enforce the Supreme Court decision and allow him to attend the university of Mississippi which, up until then, had cynically and despicably refused to admit Mr. Meredith onto their campus. With support from the governor, the school continued its stubborn resistance despite the Kennedy administrations orders otherwise, compelling Mr. Meredith to be escorted onto campus by US marshals, a provocative show of force that ignited a riot between federalist forces attempting to enforce the law, and a mixture of students, Clansmen and other radical elements who wanted no part of a black man in their white world. Besieged on all sides, the marshals witnessed Mississippi violently resist, over the next 48 hours, the will of the federal government, nearly triggering a second civil war and obligating President Kennedy to deploy, for the first time in a hundred years, combat veterans on American soil.

Though not without flaws, An American Insurrection is a spellbinding recount of a now nearly forgotten flashpoint in American history. Eclipsed by both the Cuban Missile Crisis, which followed it by three weeks, and by the broader struggle for civil rights, which centered on the efforts of Martin Luther King, the riot on the Oxford campus of the University of Mississippi was arguably the most important moment in US race relations since emancipation. For as Mr. Doyle describes in vivid detail, James Meredith orchestrated a campaign against the federal government to compel it to enforce the laws of the land's highest court. And in doing so, he forced the government to commit to racial integration with a rigor and a vigilance that no other prior government had ever exhibited. In this way, Mr. Meredith laid the cornerstones for the march to equality that would eventually culminated in a black president being elected to office 46 years later.

Mr. Doyle divides his chronicle evenly between the lead-up to the riot and to a moment-by-moment deconstruction of the violence which is all the more shocking for it having been neglected by history. The sheer audacity and narrow mindedness of the men and women who resisted Mr. Meredith's admission lends Mr. Doyle's prose an incendiary force that nearly makes the work combustible. An American Insurrection's only drawback is a half-hearted portrait of Mr. Meredith himself who Mr. Doyle clearly did not personally interview. This would have been a welcome addition to a work which is fundamentally about one man's struggle to compel change on the unchanging. That it was omitted here makes James Meredith even more of a mystery than he already is.

First-rate work that inspires as much as it dismays... (4/5 Stars)

Horror and hope in Juarez detailed in in This Love Is Not For Cowards

From The Week of January 14, 2013
For those of us fortunate enough to enjoy the stability and the security of the rule of law, it is difficult to imagine life without it. For though the media gives us a glimpse of the violence and the discord, this understanding barely scratches the surface of the toll chaos takes on societies afflicted by it. Ensconced in our comfort, we cannot conceive of never knowing if the police will protect our bodies, if the state will respect our rights, or if the institutions will allow us to provide for our families. And yet these are merely a handful of the potent fears that characterize life in countries teetering on the brink. This Mr. Powell captures admirably, albeit non-conventionally, through the enduring and universal lens of sport.

One of the most murderous cities in the world, Juarez, Mexico has virtually nothing to write home about. Its churches have been violated, its journalists have been butchered and silenced, its police have been bought. It is a land of broken dreams that, but for a quirk of fate, might have had a very different legacy. For it sits on the unfortunate side of the American border with Texas, a geographical reality that has bestowed upon it a very different political history, one that has shackled it with a legacy of corruption and revolution. But for all that Juarez has had its institutions undermined and its dreams twisted, one constant remains, one group of beleaguered souls in whom this battered place can invest some measure of their remaining hope.

The Juarez Indians, the city's soccer team, has, like its namesake, struggled for success. And yet, it experiences something of a miracle when it wins promotion to the first division of Mexican soccer. Mr. Powell, most recently a resident of Miami, relocates to Mexico to chronicle this development through the lens of the team's players, many of whom are not much better off than the residents they represent. Extortion, gang ties and poverty all stalk their steps, none of which aids their play which, for much of the season, is abysmal. Despite the best efforts of their world-class goalkeeper, the Indians surrender about as many goals as its town does bodies, creating a mid-season rift between team and town that speaks far more to Juarez's social problems than it does to the realities of sport. It's far from fair that a newly promoted soccer team bear the burdens of a broken town's dreams, but it does and they must forge from that burden something of which more than they can be proud.

The result of months of living in Juarez, This Love Is Not For Cowards is a mesmerizing piece of gonzo journalism. Calling to mind Charles Bowden's Murder City, Mr. Powell smoothly interweaves his chronicle of a soccer season with observations of Juarez itself, inadvertently creating a contest to see which can be more bleak. No surprise that the town, with its carbombs and its corpses and its cops who are either crooked or dead, wins the day. And yet, Mr. Powell so wonderfully captures the Indians, a team of earnest athletic young men who've devoted their lives to soccer, that their labors, their almost desperate need to succeed in the face of impossible odds, seems even more tragic. At least the efforts of the Indians comes from a place of honesty. The same cannot be said of the criminal, corporate and governmental elements of Juarez who do little to bring peace, much less healing, to this devastated place.

All the more tragic, then, when the team's shortcomings cause the town to scorn it. For Juarez simply cannot take another disappointment, another broken dream. It needs a win like no other place. And yet such are the limits of sport. For victories through athletics, though inspiring, are like orgasms. They are fleeting explosions of joy that cannot be sustained and that, when gone, leave one feeling exactly the same as they felt hours, days, months before. Sport cannot heal. Sport cannot mend. Sport can uplift for a time, but it is a shot in the arm, not a longterm solution. For that, other, darker, more difficult roads must be braved.

This Love Is Not For Cowards is searing work that does not provide us with a happy ending, with hope for the future. It respects us more than to lie to us. It is, instead, a piece of personal truth, an exemplar of a world it is the duty of humanity to make disappear into our past so that we all can enjoy a brighter, better future. (4/5 Stars)

God's Jury by Cullen Murphy

From The Week of October 22, 2012 Though the human character is possessed of many heartening virtues like compassion, generosity and altruism, these cannot be counted without also tallying up its more lamentable aspects. And of these, surely our tendency to be judgmental must be considered among the most grievous. For few other features of human nature have been responsible for more death and destruction than judgment which not only legitimizes our childish jealousies, it enables a capacity for slaughter on a scale that has kept human civilization from reaching its full potential. For in passing judgment on a man, one is effectively elevating himself and his codes of behavior above the object of his judgment. He is declaring that his way is better, that he is wiser. And with this superior mindset in place, authoritarianism is soon to follow. This sad, recurring truth inherent to the human character is demonstrated well in Mr. Murphy's fascinating if scattered history.

Ignited as a means of punishing heretics and scaring the faithful into proper compliance with Catholic orthodoxy, the Inquisition has existed,in various states,for almost 800 years. Formalized in 13th-century Europe and headquartered in Rome, its practitioners were dispatched to the four corners of the Catholic world where, empowered by the church, they would sit in judgement of strayed,and supposedly straying, adherents of the faith. Described by Mr. Murphy as having been detectives,prosecutors and judges rolled into one, inquisitors were not burdened with the necessity of proving their cases. They were not troubled with the bothersome necessity of public trials. Backed by the awesome authoritas of the Catholic church, they could act as they saw fit, arrogantly confident that only god, and perhaps their ecclesiastical masters, could judge them. In this way. Armed with these unimaginable powers, the Inquisition not only supposedly uncovered crypto-Muslims and Jews, they actively worked to foil the plots of those disorderly rebels who aimed to reform the church,untroubled by anything like the modern law. For in such times, they were the only law that mattered.

Chillingly penned and extensively researched, God's Jury is the gripping and disturbing result of ten years of labor. Mr. Murphy,an American author and magazine man, dredges up 800 years of church history to mount a devastating case against not only the abuses of civil liberties inherent in the surveillance state, but the ways in which the human capacity for hypocrisy and smug superiority are unleashed in the judgmental, blinding them to the balms of compassion and decency. In illustrating how inquisitors cynically kept their hands clean even while consigning tens of thousands of their fellow humans to painful torture and fiery death, The author marshalls any number of cases of the abuse of church power not so much to assault the already crumbling walls of an ancient institution, but to highlight the ways in which we can all, even the righteous, especially the righteous, be tempted to separate ourselves from our morality for the sake of power over others.

For all its virtues, God's Jury suffers somewhat from flawed construction. In incorporating elements of memoir, investigative journalism, historical non-fiction and political commentary, it is compelled to make compromises in order to come in at fewer than 400 pages. For instance, a more thorough reconstruction of the Inquisition's earlier centuries is forsaken in lieu of an analysis of how its practices and the desires that drive them can be connected to modern-day state-sponsored surveillance. But while there is value in connecting these dots, the effort dilutes the history that is the backbone of Mr. Murphy's tale, a reality that makes of it a jack of many trades but master of none. Still, it may be that the present-day connections drawn here will please many readers who might've been off-put by a dryer reconstruction of dark deeds now centuries gone.

It may well be that the Inquisition's ugliness was confined to those who claimed to be Catholics, that others were beyond their purview. But given the degree to which the Inquisition systematized cruelty, and in light of how difficult it would have been to be anything but a Christian for much of the time of its height, this fails to be a distinction with any meaning. It wasn't as though the faithful had much of a choice. In wishing to live as they chose, they were broken and burned. There is, for them, no apology too strong to earn forgiveness. (3/5 Stars)